Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [87]
At eleven-forty-five, when I’d finally brought the bowls of ice cream outside and sat atop the porch steps, I was ready.
Not ready to go.
But ready to betray her again.
And if it was possible, considering her criteria, ready for her to hate me.
When I’d made that difficult decision to leave my shoes in my closet and my camera on my desk, it had never occurred to me that Mandarin wouldn’t come. I felt hurt by it, despite the circumstances. But as the minutes passed, ticking toward the end of the hour, I also felt afraid.
Maybe I can’t be happy anywhere, she had said.
And that night of my birthday, at the football field: It feels like I’m disconnected.
And at the river, after the trophy liberation: I’d want to float away.
I had left her on top of the Tombs, overlooking the river, in that mood. She hadn’t wanted to accompany me down. I should have insisted. Wasn’t Mandarin capable of anything?
I was so lost in my thoughts, I became aware of the rumbling only gradually, as if it had begun somewhere deep underground and was rising to the surface. I strained against it, prayed for it to quit, but it only grew louder. I scanned the street one last time. Then, cradling both bowls in the crook of my arm, I wrangled open the front door, squeezed through the gap, and kicked it shut.
In the dark hall, I leaned against the other side of the door with my cheek against the wood, listening to the roar of the mosquito truck. I could smell it, the toxic stink entering my lungs, my blood vessels, and then the truck receded and the roar faded away.
The phone rang, a shock in the silence.
Startled, I almost dropped the ice cream bowls, juggling them for a precarious instant before setting them on the floor. I grabbed the phone before it could ring a second time.
“Hello?” I whispered.
When I heard her voice, I slid down the front door until I was crouching, my face and fingers and knees folded around the receiver, as she explained what she was doing, and why she had to do it, alone. I tried to convince her otherwise. But already the rumbling was beginning again: the mosquito truck’s second coming. The sound approached faster this time, as if the driver had made a wrong turn and was speeding to correct it, louder and louder, until I could hardly hear her words, or my own reply, my weak effort to change her mind.
By the time I hung up the phone, the roar had died completely.
The night was so silent I could hear the motor of the refrigerator. I picked up the ice cream bowls and followed the sound to the kitchen.
I turned the faucet to hot, held the bowls up high, and poured, watching the twin pink rivers fold into the running water. I stacked the bowls and stuck my hands, then my arms, under the water as I breathed in the steam, purifying my body of fifteen years of wildwinds and mosquito poison.
“Grace? Are you all right?”
Momma stood in the doorway. She wore a pale yellow terry cloth bathrobe. Her muumuu was probably still rancid from baby pool water.
“Who was that on the phone?”
I turned off the faucet, feeling a weak little flare of that familiar annoyance. Lie, habit compelled me. Deny. She doesn’t deserve to know. But that would take too much energy. “She’s gone,” I said.
“Gone? Who’s gone?”
“Mandarin.”
“But … what …” Momma stumbled over her words. “I don’t understand. Gone? Should we get the police? If there’s still a chance—”
“It’s too late.”
I felt hot tears soaking my cheeks, but I wasn’t sobbing. Telling Momma the truth was more of a relief than I ever would have dreamed. Even better than standing up to her. It felt like a giant sigh, a sweet gulp of air after centuries of submersion.
She had asked, and I had told her.
For now, that was all I needed.
As I passed through the living room, the sky in the window seemed to glow slightly, as if radioactive, like some momentous event had unfolded just beyond my scope of sight. The cicadas were silent. But like a solitary violinist, one lucky cricket began to play.
Everybody gaped as I unfolded Davey’s note in homeroom. Kids in Washokey would never learn to